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Can anyone order the Chopin Ballades in order of technical difficulty, then general difficulty thanks

Nope. Nobody can do such a thing.

in my experience learning them, i thought the last was most technically difficult. everybody has their own technical strengths and weaknesses though.

And therein lies the very reason that it makes little sense to try to rank in order of difficulty pieces that are, as a whole, very difficult. It's not as though one were comparing a Bach minuet with a Rachmaninoff concerto!

Regards,

Why do you ask?

If you have to ask, then you're probably not ready for any of them. The Third is the least problematic, but I found the counting and rhythmical issues to be fairly tricky.

That's what I think whenever I see a thread like this, but I assume it's not necessarily right.

I attempted the 4th Ballade but got bogged down half way through. My teacher suggested I wait a while before going back to it.

He then assigned me the 3rd Ballade. I'm tying together the last challenges of it. The last 5 pages are a blast to play but I'm still not getting clarity and accuracy on some of the large chordal passages. I'd have say the 3rd is easier than the 4th but that doesn't mean it's easy.

I wonder what happened to WiseIdiot? He was attempting the 3rd but I had the impression he was in over his head. I wonder how he did? He hasn't posted since September.

I would learn all four scherzi before any of the ballades.

I think there are very easy parts in all of them, but overall, when the going gets tough, I think the first and last are slightly harder than the other two. But what do I know? I can only play the easy parts of them anyway. I know Horowitz avoided the fourth, playing the first all the time in concerts. I think he chose his pieces carefully and kept his performing list smaller than a lot of other pianists, but there must have been something about the fourth that he didn't like, or worried about. I like it the best, personally.

Horowitz played the 4th Ballade but I think earlier in his career. I believe his recording is on YouTube.

Chopin writes pianistically-problematic codas for his larger works, so expect all of the Ballades to become ridiculously awkward when the notes get quicker at the end.

Horowitz has at least two commercial recordings of the 4th Ballade (one from his 1981 Met recital) and several non-commercial ones. He obviously did not have any technical problems with the work. Perhaps he didn't like the 4th Ballade as much as the 1st Ballade, or perhaps he wasn't interpretively comfortable with the 4th Ballade (the most profound of Chopin's works).

Regarding the thread question, I think that most pianists would agree that the 4th Ballade is the most technically and musically demanding, while the 3rd Ballade is the least technically demanding. The debatable issue is whether the 1st Ballade is harder than the 2nd Ballade.

According to my experience ( I studied all Ballades )

technical difficulty:

No. 2 > No. 1 > No. 4 > No. 3
hardest

musical difficulty:

No. 3 > No. 4 > No. 1 > No. 2
hardest

rhythmic difficulty:

No. 3 > No. 1 > No. 4 > No. 2
hardest

So "IMO" skip No. 2 and No. 3 ( cause they are, I think above your level, I guess )

Choose No. 1 or No. 4

But their codas require mature technique.

@Joel_W

Scherzos are harder than ballades. Especially Scherzo no. 4 and no. 1 are devilishly hard.

I would rank 4 over the others on musical difficulty and interpretive difficulty as well as technical. Then 1. Numbers 2 and 3 less so than the others.

IMO the 4th Scherzo is a greater technical challenge than any of the Ballades.

Not really.


He recorded it, and performed it many times.


I don't think there's any reason to think that. And BTW I don't know that he gave any more attention to the 3rd than to the 4th.

Actually I think the one he played least was the 2nd.

Spoken like a true Chopiniac. Still I think the OP would be least likely to butcher the 3rd one...maybe.

For you!

Why not simply learn some of the more difficult Preludes, Impromptus, Mazurkas or whatever. Why "all four" of the Scherzi ??? Are they really a "prerequisite" for the Ballades???